Sunday, September 26, 2010

Lindt Lindor Truffles Orange Dark Chocolate 120 Count Box: A Lot Of An Average Truffle!



The Good: Good taste, Great bulking, Generally decent ingredients
The Bad: Still pricey, Less impressive taste than many would like.
The Basics: The Orange Chocolate truffle is less zesty or exciting than most of the others in the line, but the 120 count box is still a decent value for the quality.

My wife is pretty awesome when it comes to enjoying the culinary creations I come up with in the kitchen. Most of the things I do to keep her tastebuds happy involve variations on the theme and making minor adjustments to things the likes. But when she claimed she loved Suiss Miss Hot Cocoa With Marshmallow, I couldn't help but notice that her box of cocoa lingered while I went through three boxes of my own hot cocoas. So, on one of the rare occasions when she let me make her up some hot cocoa, I decided to zest it up for her by adding a splash of orange extract. Within two days, her hot cocoa was gone. On some level, she was bored with the basic chocolate flavor of most hot cocoas, and it was infusing the milk chocolate beverage with orange (and later mint, strawberry and - surprisingly enough - lemon) extract which made her excited about drinking hot chocolate again.

To reward me for my creativity, the next time she went out, my partner returned with more hot cocoa for herself and a big box of Orange Dark Chocolate Lindt Lindor Truffles for me. She figured that if I had doctored her cocoa to make it orange chocolate flavored, I must love the flavor and I think I surprised her by telling her that I had never had the Lindt Orange Dark Chocolate Lindor Truffles! Now, as I am halfway through the box of 120 truffles, I am not surprised I never bulked up on or tried these before.

Basics

Lindt Lindor Dark Orange Chocolate truffles are one of the standard ten chocolate truffles from the Swiss chocolatiers Lindt & Sprungli and their U.S.-based subsidiary. Each truffle is a one inch sphere of chocolate with a shell about an eighth of an inch thick. This shell covers a thick chocolate orange ganache ball inside and that center ball is a softer substance than the outer coating. Each of the truffles comes individually wrapped in an orange foil wrapper, which one thinks would be easy to differentiate from the other Lindor Truffles, but no: Lindt has an almost identical color for the wrap on the Peanut Butter truffles and even the Hazelnut's brown-orange foil looks similar under low light conditions. While I usually rail against the environmental impact of individually-wrapped candies, it is hard to imagine Lindt Lindor truffles not wrapped. This keeps each one clean, unmelted and intact.

Each Lindor Truffle is a sphere with a seam at the hemisphere that is essentially a chocolate globe sealing in a near-solid chocolate ball inside. In this form, the 120 count box, the individually-wrapped truffles are packaged together in a thin cardboard box. This size has one hundred twenty truffles, which lowers their overall cost to about thirty cents each. While this might still seem a little pricey to some, it is a decent price for chocolates of this quality.

Ease of Preparation

These are candy, so preparing them is as simple as opening the box and then opening one of the plastic wrappers around the actual chocolate truffles one wishes to eat. There is no special way to unwrap or eat Lindt Lindor Dark Orange Chocolate truffles, though unwrapping the truffles before eating them is highly recommended.

Taste

There is a strong scent to these Lindt Lindor Truffles, which is an orange scent. When one unwraps the foil around this candy, they are almost instantly overcome with the scent of the orange in these Orange Dark Chocolate truffles. Indeed, if one had any doubt about what flavor these might be, the scent will instantly put their mind at ease. The strong orange scent emanating from this little chocolate ball is distinct.

Pressing forward with the taste, the Orange Chocolate truffle melts on the tongue, though it is a little more solid than most milk chocolate truffles. Whatever the reason, I suspect it has to do with the coating actually having the orange flavor in it, so this truffle does not just rely on its center for the taste it claims to have, And the Orange Dark Chocolate is a very true incarnation of the claimed flavor. There is a muted citrus zest to these truffles, but it is clearly orange flavored as the tongue pushes through the outer shell and through the center.

The Orange Chocolate is sweet, but not overly sweet like pure milk chocolate or like a confection filled with something like caramel. Instead, the orange chocolate ganache is more subtle than overwhelming. This makes this a more subtle or classy truffle than one which will beat the consumer over the taste buds with its flavor. The chocolate, other than being infused with the subtle orange flavor, is more muted than strong. It is very much a milk chocolate as opposed to anything darker, which is pretty surprising given that it claims to be dark chocolate. Fans of chocolate flavor will likely find this truffle to be more subtle than extraordinary.

Nutrition

Well, these are candy, so it is tough to look at these for something nutritious and then blame them for not being healthy. Lindt Lindor truffles are surprisingly good, though, which is probably why they are so expensive. The primary ingredients are chocolate, vegetable oil and sugar. Still, there is nothing unpronounable in these candies, which is something I have come to expect from Lindt.

A serving of the Lindt Lindor Orange Dark Chocolate truffles is considered three balls. From three truffles, one consumes 210 calories, 170 of those calories being from fat. There is less than five milligrams of cholesterol, no sodium, nor any vitamins in these truffles, but seriously, did you think there would be? There is, however, 4% of one's daily iron and 2% of their daily calcium in three spheres, so there is something to rationalize gluttony to!

Honestly, these are candy and anyone looking to them for actual nutrition needs to get a reality check. These are not Vegan-compliant, nor are they recommended for anyone with a nut allergy as they are produced on the same equipment that peanuts (and tree nuts) pass over. They are, not marked as kosher, nor gluten-free.

Storage/Clean-up

The box of these Lindt Lindor Dark Orange Chocolate truffles remain fresh for quite some time. However, even the box notes they ought to be kept in a cool environment between 60 and 68 degrees Fahrenheit. Kept in such an environment, the box of truffles my partner bought in January will remain fresh until the end of 2010. Given the more mild taste of this flavor of Lindt Lindor Truffles, they might actually make it to the end of the year! Given that they are individually wrapped in a very sealed package, it is hard to imagine just what it would take for these to go bad outside melting and refreezing.

As for cleanup, throw the wrappers in the garbage and you've taken care of cleanup! Outside that, there is no real cleanup needed, unless one is eating them in a hot environment. In that case, it is likely one would need to wash their hands. If these truffles melt into most fabrics, they will stain. For that style of clean-up, be sure to consult a fabric guide for whatever you stained.

Overall

The Lindt Orange Dark Chocolate Lindor Truffles are good, but they are not the most extraordinary flavor by any means and this is a tougher flavor to recommend stocking up on in this ultimate bulk pack. Ultimately, I do recommend them because this bulk lowers the overall price of this otherwise expensive candy. But, the truth is, the Orange Chocolate truffles are more average than extraordinary and it's tough to want so much of "average" around when they could have extraordinary.

For other chocolate treats, please check out my reviews of:
Lindt Raspberry Lindor Truffles
Lindt Pistachio Nut Bar
Jell-O Chocolate Fudge Pudding

5/10

For other candy reviews, please check out my index page!
© 2010 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.



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